Victoria Frankenstein, III: Part 14

 

Twelve

Now I was in shock. Had Mr. Leon been playing me all along? Was he really operating as an agent for Dr. Eastbrook?

I needed help. But I was alone.

I stood there dumbfounded as the two of them shook hands and smiled. Then Dr. Eastbrook smiled at me. And said, “I know you’re confused.”

I said nothing.

“Come on over here and sit down.” He gestured toward some chairs I had not noticed before.

I said nothing. I did not move.

“It’s all right, Vickie,” said Mr. Leon.

I said nothing. I did not move.

Both of them shrugged and moved to chairs that were facing me. “Don’t you have any questions?” asked Dr. Eastbrook. “Surely you do?”

I said nothing.

And then I did.”Tell me, Mr. Leon, why did we revisit all Middle Island, and Put-In Bay and … Niagara Falls?”

“Good question,” he said—as if flattering me was going to make some kind of difference.

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I know.” I paused, looked at them both. “You wanted to make sure Dr. Eastbrook had left no traces behind? No traces that could lead the authorities to him?”

Mr. Leon smiled, turned to Dr. Eastbrook. “I told you she was bright,” he said.

“As if I didn’t know,” said Dr. Eastbrook in a bit of a darker tone. “She has somehow managed to disrupt my research several times. That could not have all been just some kind of childish luck!”

My fear was fading; my anger, rising. I was sick of their sarcasm—their smug sarcasm.

“Where’s Father?” I demanded.

They just looked at me.

“And who was that Father-robot back in that diner near the Falls?”

Dr. Eastbrook smiled. “That was wonderful, wasn’t it? I’d love to have seen your face when he walked into the room.” He laughed—but it sounded to me more like a snarl.

Mr. Leon was laughing, too. “I did see it,” he said, “and it was all I could do to keep from laughing.”

“Yes, laughter can ruin things,” growled Dr. Eastbrook.

Then he turned sharply toward me. “Now, little Vickie,” he mewed. “Where is it?”

I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“Don’t play dumb,” he said—“not with me.”

I said nothing.

“I know you have it,” he continued. “And if you tell me where it is right now, well, things will go a little easier for you. If not …” And then he barked some primitive, wolfish sound, and another portion of rock wall opened, and through it came Blue Boyle. Well, sort of. This version of Blue seemed to be about twice as large as he used to be. He looked kind of like a rhinoceros that could walk on its hind legs.

***

“I have nothing to say to any of you”—Blue Boyle was moving toward me, and I tried to sound fearless—“so I suggest you tell me—”

Blue tapped me on the head, and that’s the last thing I remember for quite a while.

***

It had been a pleasant darkness, and as I slowly felt myself re-entering the light—re-entering the world—still alive!—I slowly opened my eyes.

I was alone.

I was in some other cavern—or part of one—and I had no idea how much time had passed. Other than a slight headache, courtesy of Blue Boyle, I seemed all right—though I checked myself to make sure: no missing limbs, no horrible injuries.

Nor was I bound or chained—just alone in a grim cavern, sitting on the floor, leaning against a stone wall, and fearing that I would never again see the outside world.

I could hear the outside world, however. The surges of the nearby waterfall obscured most every other sound—but that sound alone was a mild kind of comfort.

As my mind cleared some more—to the point that I could actually form coherent thoughts—I began to consider a series of questions:

·       Why did Mr. Leon betray me?

·       Had he ever been loyal to me?

·       Had I actually experienced those odd things? The Karmann Ghia that seemed able to ride the river of time in a way that the rest of us could not—except in dream or imagination? The conversations with William Godwin and James Fenimore Cooper? The encounter with Father in the diner? The mysterious arrivals and departures of Aunt Claire, of John, of Harriet?

·       Had any of this actually happened? Or was it all some kind of weird dream—and if it was a dream, could I still be asleep?

That would be nice, I thought. I would soon wake up, and this would all be over, and Father would still be …

And then I bolted upright, electrified by the thought that I was certain was the truth. It wasn’t a question—it was a realization.

I’ve been drugged!

No doubt about it. But then questions surged in: Who had done it? When? How? Why?

I decided that the only way I could find out was to play along with Dr. Eastbrook—pretend that I still believed all the unbelievable things that had occurred since I found Father missing. Make him think I was still in my drug delirium.

What an irony, I thought. Blue Boyle actually knocked some sense into me.

***

I’m not sure how long it was—a few minutes? an hour?—before I heard the stone wall across from me begin to move aside. And in came Dr. Eastbrook and Blue Boyle.

“Feeling better?” the doctor inquired, as if I were a patient back in his office.

“I see you haven’t lost your bedside manner,” I said.

“And you haven’t lost your smart mouth,” he replied in a much different tone. “Do I need to let Blue loose on you once again?”

“No, thank you.”

“Excellent decision,” he said in that cheerier, Sesame Street way.

I said nothing.

And so on he went: “Have you thought anymore about the question I asked you? About something you might have found on Green Island?”

I ignored his question. Instead, I had one of my own.

“Has any of this really happened?” I asked. “Or have I been a pawn in your latest chess game?”

“Very good,” he said, smiling with what I recognized as his typical arrogance. “I’d heard you were halfway intelligent.”

I said nothing.

“I guess I could torture the answer out of you,” he said, “but that would be against the oath I took when I became a physician.”

As if you’ve ever worried about that, I thought. I smiled instead of spoke.

“But why not make a bargain?” he said. “I tell you how I arranged all this—and you tell me where it is.”

“I’ll tell you the truth,” I said.

He didn’t seem to catch the idea that I was being a bit ambiguous, and on he went to explain how he had manipulated me.

“It started back in Ohio, in Wisbech.” He looked at me as if I might have a question. Oh, I did, but I was not going to satisfy him by asking it.

“Anyway,” he said, “when you came home from Dracula, Baby! that night, you found the house empty and all the lights on.”

“Yes.”

“But what you didn’t know is this: Your father had left a note for you—well, we had left a note for you, forged in your father’s hand.”

“I found no note!” I cried.

“Patience, patience,” he said. “We left a note for you that said he’d gone out to get some soft drinks and had left the last one for you on the counter.”

“I remember none of this.”

“Exactly. I already had … custody … of your father and had injected a little ‘medicine’ through the cap of that bottle.”

“Medicine?”

“A drug,” he said. “A very powerful one I have concocted over the years. It both subdues you and causes you to have the sorts of hallucinations that I need.”

“So everything that’s happened … the memories of Father’s disappearance … of the swift journeys here and there in Mr. Leon’s car …?”

“All—well, mostly—drug-induced visions.”

I couldn’t believe it—all of it had seemed so real.

Dr. Eastbrook seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. “One of the very special  effects of the drug,” he said, “is to put you to sleep when you’re moving—like in that car.”

I was starting to feel very, very stupid—and gullible.

“And,” he continued, “when you arrived at a place, you would wake up, and you would find that you were encountering people from your memory and imagination—only they weren’t there at all.”

Very, very, very stupid.

“Periodically,” he said, “Mr. Leon or I would zap something you were drinking with a little more of the drug—but I forgot at Green Island, and it was there that you found … it.”

And then he looked at me fiercely. “And so now it’s your turn to tell me where ‘it’ is.”

“I forgot,” I said. And I was absolutely telling the truth.

***

He very obviously was not pleased with the truth. But I carried on, hoping to convince him before he nodded again to Blue Boyle, who would do what Blue Boyle did best.

“You’ve said yourself”—I was speaking hurriedly—“that I would forget—that the drug would make me forget …”

He stared at me. Debating. I saw his body tense, then relax.

“Vickie,” he said, “you’re very bright. I’ve learned that about you.”

I said nothing.

“So I hope you’re not trying to deceive me right now.” He stared at me intently.

“I’m not.”

“Good,” he said. “For doing so would have some very serious consequences.”

And he and Blue Boyle whirled around and exited through the opening in the wall of the cavern, the opening promptly closing as soon as they had passed through it.

***

Now what?

I slumped back down where I had been before—on the cold stone floor—and tried to figure out what to do.

Apparently, I could expect no help from the outside. The “outside” that I’d thought was there was not there. It resided only in my head, created there by the workings of some drug Dr. Eastbrook had cooked up—probably in some kind of witch’s cauldron.

Yelling would be pointless. No one would hear me.

The old message-in-a-bottle idea? Pointless, too. Nothing to write with. No bottle.

Fighting Blue Boyle? I almost laughed when I thought of that one. Peter Rabbit vs. Godzilla. David vs. Goliath.

And then the idea came.